How the candidates for California governor would make college more affordable

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Graduates walk to their UC Berkeley Spring Commencement ceremony at Memorial Stadium in Berkeley in May 2018. The Democratic candidates for governor have all come out with proposals to make public higher education more affordable in California. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)

All of the top Democrats running for California governor are calling for major new investments to make the state’s public universities more affordable and relieve crushing student debt, suggesting they’d be more willing than Gov. Jerry Brown to open state purse strings and give students a hand up.

The proposals focus on helping Californians afford college as the Golden State struggles to preserve a public higher education system that was once the envy of the world. While California already has some of the most generous financial aid in the country, the University of California and California State University both have seen tuition and fees soar over the last decade. And the high cost of living in the Golden State is squeezing student budgets even further.

Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom says he would guarantee two free years of community college. State Treasurer John Chiang would do the same while also cutting tuition at UC and CSU schools by nearly half. Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa would give students two years of free college at any public university in exchange for two years of work in a community service program.

San Diego businessman John Cox, the only Republican candidate to respond to requests about his plan, is focused on cutting waste in university administrations rather than investing new money in higher education.

The plans come as students warn of an increasingly dire affordability crisis. At CSU, one in 10 students have experienced homelessness in the last year and more than four in 10 sometimes have trouble buying enough food, a study released in January found. Wilson Hall, the student association president at Sonoma State University, said his group burned through its entire school year’s worth of emergency housing funding in a few months last year.

“What our focus needs to be is how to provide more support for the basic needs, like food and housing, to attend college,” said Hall, a 21-year-old criminology major from Oakland whose tuition costs are supported by grants. “For me, that’s not tuition, that means putting gas in my car to get to campus or buying groceries.”

Here are some of the candidates’ proposals:

Reform financial aid programs to support low-income students (Newsom, Villaraigosa, and Chiang)

All three of the top Democrats support reforming the state’s financial aid programs to better cover cost of living and other nontuition expenses, they said in a questionnaire released by the advocacy group Campaign for College Opportunity. Details for how they’re going to achieve that are scarce. Newsom specifically vowed to increase the limited number of Cal Grant B awards, which cover some living expenses for low-income students.

Experts say that reforming financial aid to better cover nontuition costs is one of the best ways to help low-income students, many of whom already have their tuition paid with existing grants. “The top governor candidates understand the idea that the cost of college is much more than tuition,” said Audrey Dow, a senior vice president with the Campaign for College Opportunity. “Each one, in their own way, is thinking about how we address those costs for students.”

Cut UC and CSU tuition in half (Chiang)

Chiang has the most specific proposal on tuition costs: By 2028, he’s calling for the combined tuition and fees for full-time, in-state UC undergraduates to be cut from $12,630 to $7,126 per year, a 44 percent reduction, and the tuition for CSU undergraduates to be cut from $5,742 to $3,048 per year, a 47 percent reduction.

Doing so would cost about $2 billion annually, his campaign estimates. He plans to pay for that with new investments from the state general fund, finding “greater efficiencies” in the UC and CSU systems, and maximizing UC earnings from entrepreneurial activity such as patents. He’s also advocating for a bill in the U.S. Senate that would increase federal funding if states help students avoid student debt — although it seems unlikely to pass while Republicans control Congress.

Give California students free tuition for pubic service (Villaraigosa)

Villaraigosa’s plan — dubbed the “California Dream Corps” — would allow any California student between the ages of 18 and 25 to get one or two years of free tuition and textbooks at any state college in exchange for participating for one or two years in a community service program. The program would follow the model of Americorps or the California Conservation Corps, which deploys young people for environmental conservation and emergency response jobs and pays them minimum wage.

His campaign said the proposal’s cost would depend on other reforms in student financial aid and suggested that it could be paid in part by closing state tax loopholes.

Make two years of community college free (Newsom and Chiang)

Free community college has become an increasingly popular liberal priority around the country, and Newsom and Chiang have both embraced guaranteeing free two years of community college. That’s less far-reaching than it sounds, however, because community college tuition in California is the lowest in the country, and because Brown already signed a bill last year that would allow community colleges to make one year of tuition free for full-time students starting this fall. Legislative estimates put the cost of guaranteeing a single year of free community college tuition at around $30 to $50 million.

Proponents say free community college is a powerful tool for upward mobility. Villaraigosa, meanwhile, argued that guaranteeing free tuition wouldn’t be the best use of funds — about 43 percent of community college students, including most low-income students, already have their tuition paid for with existing grants. “Providing tuition-free community college regardless of financial need actually does a disservice to those less able to attend (by) depriving our higher education system of resources that could be used to expand access and affordability,” the former L.A. mayor said in a statement.

Cut from UC administration, invest in online education (Cox)

In contrast with the Democratic largesse, Republican Cox said he wanted to focus on cutting $400 million from the UC President’s office, supporting the expansion of online education, and boosting the performance of the UC and CSU endowment funds. “Before we look at new money, we need to reduce waste and inefficiency and that will give us a clear picture of our public universities’ actual position,” he said in an email.

Prioritize Californians in UC admissions (Chiang)

Chiang also wants to give priority enrollment to California students at increasingly competitive UC schools, reducing the number out-of-state students at campuses that turn away qualified Californians. In 2016, 16.5 percent of UC students were from out of state, and the number of nonresident students — who pay much more than Californians — has risen over the last decade.

Start college savings accounts for kindergarteners (Newsom and Chiang)

Many experts see college savings accounts as a powerful tool to help low-income families afford college. Newsom has proposed starting a savings account for every incoming kindergartener in California, building on a similar program he started in San Francisco. Chiang’s campaign says he would incentivize families to establish college savings accounts with tax credits.

Former State Superintendent of Public Education Delaine Eastin, who has trailed in the polls, has said she wants to make public colleges tuition free and called for reinvesting in higher education instead of prisons. Her campaign didn’t respond to a request for more details. Assemblyman Travis Allen’s campaign also didn’t provide details of his higher education plans.

Higher education funding could be a big issue in this year’s budget negotiations. Brown has allocated a three percent funding increase for UC and CSU, as well as $100 million in one-time school infrastructure spending and funding for the one-year free community college bill. But he’s socked away two-thirds of the state’s whopping $9 billion surplus, resisting calls from some advocates and legislators to spend more to promote college affordability.

Casey Tolan covers national politics and the Trump administration for the Bay Area News Group. Previously, he was a reporter for the news website Fusion, where he covered criminal justice, immigration, and politics. His reporting has also been published in CNN, Slate, the Village Voice, the Texas Observer, the Daily Beast and other news outlets. Casey grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and graduated from Columbia University.

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